At the Women’s World Cup, a Memento Players Are Stuck With and Stuck To

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — Before the United States played Sweden in a Women’s World Cup match here this month, some American fans waited in line for hours to be the first to enter the stadium. When the gates finally opened, it was like the running of the bulls.

Parents sprinted down the main concourse. Preteen girls dodged food carts and garbage cans to cut in front of people ahead of them.

They were not off to their seats; their destination was the souvenir shop. In a matter of minutes, a line snaked out the store’s doors. Those poor people. What they didn’t know was that the best memento from this World Cup was actually down on the field, hidden — for the moment — between the blades of fake grass.

Millions upon millions of tiny rubber pellets.

That’s the collectible fans should take home from this World Cup, the first to be played exclusively on artificial turf. It’s certainly what many of the players will remember.

“We find those things everywhere,” United States defender Julie Johnston said. “They are between your toes and in your shorts. Two days later, you’ll find some on another part of your body. You’re like, ‘I don’t understand how this isn’t leaving.’ ”

Image

Rubber pellets, made from recycled tires, clung to the sweat-drenched skin of the Brazilian midfielder Marta on Sunday.CreditFranck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Midfielder Megan Rapinoe said that she had discovered the dark pellets in her hair and her nose, but not yet, thankfully, in her mouth. The mere mention of the topic drew a feigned look of disgust from her teammate Meghan Klingenberg.

“I’ve found them in my bra — it’s incredible where you can find them,” Klingenberg said. “I’ll take a shower later that day, and I’ll be like, ‘What in the world?’ ”

A World Cup T-shirt will fade and become threadbare, but these World Cup souvenirs will last and last — because, after all, bits of recycled rubber don’t exactly scream biodegradable. They will also stand a constant reminder that neither FIFA nor the Canadian Soccer Association valued the women’s game enough to mandate that its biggest championship be played on grass — the way the game should be played, and the way the men get to play it.

FIFA has long supported and praised developments in artificial turf technology, and it has pushed its wider use. And in some parts of the world, it does make financial sense to install a durable artificial field rather than a natural one that might not hold up to overuse or the elements. But questions have been raised about whether players’ repeated exposure to all that ground-up rubber comes with the risk of health problems. Much of the evidence remains anecdotal, and the studies on the topic have been limited or financed by the industry itself.

Until there is more data, women’s soccer will have a World Cup to remember, black pellets and all. This one has featured better TV ratings than ever, more fans than ever and more interaction between players and recycled bits of car tires than ever.

Watch the ball or any player hit the turf during a game, and you’ll see a spray of black scatter so naturally that it’s as if drops of rain are splashing into the air (if there were such a thing as coal-black rain).

Still, artificial turf is the future of the sport, FIFA’s president has said, so players should embrace it and prepare to be pelted in the face with grains of rubber, game after game, for years to come. Besides, nothing accentuates the game’s beauty and long history more than the world’s best players battling for 90 minutes on Liga Turf RS+CoolPlus World Cup Edition 260 W ACS Bionic Fibre Infill.

So maybe every player should take home a jarful of crumbs of old Goodyears to share with their grandchildren one day. There will be so many stories to tell.

United States midfielder Lori Chalupny will remember finding the pellets in her bedsheets days after playing on artificial turf. Alex Morgan and others will recall how the pellets absorb not only shocks but heat, making a match in the midday summer sun something like playing on a simmering frying pan. Morgan has told stories of playing on turf so hot — as high as 160 degrees — that she needed to be in constant motion to keep from searing the soles of her feet right through her cleats.

“Your feet will burn right off,” Klingenberg said.

The Swedish midfielder Nilla Fischer said some of her teammates wrapped each of their toes with athletic tape every time they played on turf, to prevent blisters created by the scorching surface.

And when those players remove the tape, what do they find collected on it? You guessed it: more souvenir pellets.

Chalupny said she felt terrible every time she changed in her hotel after a game or a practice, knowing that the simple act of peeling off her shorts and shirt would send the traveling tidbits in every direction — onto the carpet, into the tub, onto furniture.

“I’m sure the maids just love us,” she said.

But one maid at a team hotel here couldn’t tell me how much of a nuisance the pellets might have been at this World Cup, or how annoying it could be to find them in the laundry days after the teams had departed. She said she was afraid to talk to a reporter.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think FIFA would like that,” she said. “And we don’t want to get in trouble with FIFA.”

Email: juliet@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: A Memento Players Carry With Them, Like It or Not. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe